Right now, the warehouse floor at Jet Fresh, flower importers in Miami, is busy to say the least. 

“People can envision the stock market and how you see it on TV — all the guys screaming and yelling inside the stock exchange and all the papers flying around and all that stuff. Well, that’s what it’s like for us with flowers,” said Michael Black, who manages all the chaos. Somehow. 

Valentine’s Day is make-or-break for the flower industry, he said, even though he typically sells more stems during another holiday that’s coming up in May. “Mother’s Day is a bigger volume holiday, but Valentine is bigger dollars,” he noted.

This week, tens of millions of fresh cut flowers are arriving in the U.S., mostly from South America. Imports account for more than 80% of flowers sold here, and it’s a $2 billion industry.

The bigger dollars that Black talked about this time of year are thanks to one flower in particular — a flower Gustavo Niño is looking to buy this week.

“Yeah, I’m trying to specifically buy roses, right?” said Niño, who researches agricultural economics at the University of Illinois. “Americans actually love roses. Roses represent 50% of the imports.”

And the vast majority of those roses come from just two countries: Colombia and Ecuador.

They have ideal microclimates “that allow them to have a very good production all over the year,” Niño said.

With no offseason, those South American imports have been key to meeting growing demand for cut flowers. Niño said that imports have more than doubled since 2020. Most arrive by air, for freshness.

But “another method that’s really growing quickly is sea-shipping,” said Kate Penn, CEO of the Society of American Florists. “More flowers are coming in on container ships.”

Penn said that as long as they’re chilled, those slower — and cheaper-to-use — ships work just fine for your standard commodity flowers.

“Carnations and mums and roses and those things that retailers know that they need,” she said. “You pre-order them, and they’re just part of your inventory.”

Prices on cut flowers have stayed relatively stable in the last couple years, according to Penn. But remember all that will-he-won’t-he of Trump’s tariff threat against Colombia last month? That sent a shock through the industry.

“That would have had an influence on prices, and it really is a pennies business in terms of margin,” she said.

And so, Penn added, there’s only so much flower importers can weather before their business starts to wilt.